Special SXSW…
Artist to Artist Interviews
Vestiges Vs. Enabler

This Friday from noon to 6pm, anyone reading this from SXSW has the opportunity to see a killer lineup at the CVLT Nation/Century Media/Stumptown Coffee showcase! To get an idea of what you’re in for, Vestiges and Enabler have gotten together for an in-depth conversation exclusively for CVLT Nation. Check out the interview below, and find out what’s in the mind’s eye of two of our favorite bands…

Vestiges: I’m sure you have probably been asked this a million times, but what is the meaning behind the band name? I only ask because I’m really interested in the band’s biography section, which states “the world is fucked and this is the soundtrack to its demise,” so I’m wondering if there’s a deeper meaning to the term “enabler” or perhaps a common theme that is expressed throughout your entire discography?

Enabler: The name actually came from our former bassist. Enabler had been a project of mine for a few years and I had a previous band called Savior for a Fallen Hero where we played some of the same songs, but I played drums. SFAFH was put on hold when I went on to drum for Trap Them for about 6 months or so. When I got back, the members of SFAFH were either not interested in doing the band, had moved away, and one guy had went to jail. I still really loved the material I was writing, and had been itching to play guitar in a band for years. NO ONE took me seriously when I said I wasn’t going to drum and I was going to sing and play guitar. I took a few months off from being in a band, saved up money, and eventually met our first drummer Brian who’s roommate was our first bassist. Within 3 weeks of jamming, we were playing shows. I already had written our first record “Eden Sank to Grief”, so the band was ready to go, except that we didn’t want to call it Savior for a Fallen Hero. I suggested several names, but honestly I could have suggested the best name in the world and those two would have said no because they were so set on naming the band. Enabler was brought up, and that was the best one so I said yes. The things that attracted me to the name were that a band called Enabler could sound like anything, and that music really does enable me to live my life the way I want to. I don’t want to be a band that pigeon-holed into one sound, and I think Enabler is fitting to that.

The short bio is a basic theme of the band. There is so much happening with this band all the time, it would be impossible to keep up a detailed bio. People can look into it for themselves.

Photos: Tanner Douglass

Enabler: I notice that you guys have links to free downloads available on your facebook page. Do you think this helps promote the band? Do you think it helps or hurts record sales at shows? And, how do you feel about a lot of hosting sites for file sharing being shut down? Personally, I put our stuff up on mediafire, mainly so I can quickly send files to new members to learn songs, but I’m not opposed to other people downloading our stuff, I just don’t advertise it. So I’m a little bummed to hear that mediafire is probably going to be shut down.

Vestiges: As an independent band, we fully believe that we wouldn’t have half of the support that we have right now if we didn’t offer our music for free. We’re interested in sharing our music and our message with as many people as possible, not in keeping our music from people in the hopes of selling a record at a show. It’s not about money for us, and if it was, we wouldn’t be playing this music. Beyond that, if we didn’t think we could sell 500 records, we wouldn’t have them pressed in the first place; it’s as simple as that. I mean, we fronted $12k to record and press our debut full-length prior to recording a demo, playing a show, or announcing that we were even a band, so by no means should any of this be taken as advice, it just all boils down to the fact that we believe in the music that we are releasing and are willing to work that much harder to release it for free.

Vestiges: Speaking of releasing music, I read that you have a new record coming out in the next couple of months and that Matt Mixon, formerly of 7 Angels 7 Plagues, helped track some backing vocals. I’m a huge 7A7P fan, so I’m really looking forward to hearing his contributions, as well as the album as a whole. What can we expect from Enabler this time around?

Enabler: Yeah man, we have a new record that’s knee deep in the mixing process as of right now. The goal is to have this come out in July or August now. Southern Lord just said “let us know when it’s done and we’ll get everything set up”, where I feel like a lot of bigger labels put a deadline on things, and you can tell with a lot of records that are rushed out while a band has hype that things can be rushed. Total respect for the art of creating music and solid records, I totally back that the label is so artist friendly.

What to expect? Everything is a lot more together on this record. I’ve had a lot of time with these songs in the demo versions, and some of them were played out with previous members, in addition to us playing a lot of these songs live on tour right before we went in to record, so there was a lot of time for things to get tweaked to perfection. We’ve spent more time on this release than any other release. Every other recording, we gone in an recorded everything as fast as possible. We recorded our first full length basically live (with a few over dubs) in about 4 or 5 days. We did 18 days of tracking on the new record, and we’ve been mixing / editing for about 3 weeks now. It totally helps that our new guitarist Greg Thomas is an experienced recording engineer so that we have the freedom to take extra time on it. We’re going for a “perfect” record this time, where the other records are pretty rough around the edges. I totally respect the raw recording, but we’ve done that 4 times now, so it was time to change it up. Another thing I feel I should mention is that everything is being recorded and edited in digital, and then being mixed in analog, so before you think “oh no, this record is going to sound like a computerized machine”, it’ll have that warmth and personality that all of our favorite records from 20 years ago had.

And yes, Matt Mixon sang on a few tracks in addition to Christian Fillippo (ex-Harlots), Dave Klingenburg (The Ox King), Greg Thomas, and our former guitarist Ben Willkommen. The idea is instead of doing gang vocals, let’s have different voices randomly placed through the recording. The latest Shai Hulud record (which Greg produced) has that all over it, and it sounds insane. We recorded everything besides drums at our drummer Andy’s house, and Mixon lives there so it was a pretty easy process compared to other dudes driving up from Chicago and Indiana.

Enabler: Let’s talk about split records. I’ve heard the Ghaust split (they also did a split with some of my good friends Aseethe), and I see you guys have a split that just came out with Caulfield. We’ve also had a slew of splits come out in the past 3 years. I’m personally into split records / tapes, I feel like it’s the punk version of a single. One complaint that I’ve heard over the past 10 years about splits is that “I bought it for the band that I like, but man the other band on this split sucks”. What are your thoughts on splits in general?

Vestiges: Splits are one of the best ways to reach new audiences with your music, and for half the price, but there is definitely a negative connotation attached to splits for the very reason that you mentioned, at least as far as the listeners are concerned. Regardless, it’s always interesting to see which bands decide to work together and read about how it all came to be, whether the other half of the split fell short or not.

Since we tend to incorporate a few different genres into each one of our songs, we have been able to work with a number of different bands, including the previously mentioned heavy post-rock duo Ghaust from Indonesia and the dark hardcore band Caulfield from California. We have definitely seen mixed reviews across the board, especially from Ghaust fans that seem to be a bit more accustomed to the instrumental side of the post-rock genre, but it’s all worth it the second you hear from that first new listener who says that they would have never heard of your band had it not been for the split.

Also, since all of our releases follow a central narrative in sequential order, our listeners cannot overlook our split releases if they want to understand the entire story. It’s just our way of trying to help make our splits a little more desirable and a little less overlooked. We released VI on the split with Ghaust, a cover of “Zombie” by The Cranberries that works into our narrative on the split with Caulfield, and we will be releasing VII and VIII on a split with atmospheric black metal band Panopticon before heading to Europe this summer. We plan on releasing a series of splits between each full-length, which we will start writing and recording shortly after returning home from Europe in August.

Vestiges: What are your current plans for tour now that your next full-length “All Hail The Void” is slated to be released on Southern Lord this summer?

Enabler: In addition to leaving for our tour to SXSW and back today, we have a west coast tour in May, midwest dates in July (on an awesome tour that I can’t say anything about!), Power of the Riff fest, Europe in Aug / Sep, The Fest in Gainesville, and whatever else might pop up! It’s getting to that point where it’s starting to feel like a job. It’s a lot to deal with sometimes, but this is the time I have in my life to do this, and I don’t expect it to last forever.

Enabler: So you guys are from DC? How are things locally for you? Any bands we should be keeping an eye on? Milwaukee has been good to us for the most part. We have a handful of fucking awesome bands – Protestant, Northless, Get Rad, etc. but there isn’t a lot of new blood keeping the scene alive. It’s also tricky because our guitarist Greg lives in Connecticut and comes out for tour, so we are unable to do one-off shows. Do you guys have any out of state members that you have to import to make the rock happen?

Vestiges: We are all originally from DC, but I am actually the only one left since the rest of the guys moved to central Virginia, Florida, and Washington state. We’re spread to hell and the only time we really get together is to tour and record, but we make it work, though we are in the same boat with you as far as one-off shows are concerned. We have had to turn down a ton of great shows in and around DC because we just couldn’t make it happen. Turning down shows is one of the worst feelings, especially considering the fact that we’ve only played one local show at this point, and that show alone took three tours to finally put together. DC has always been pretty difficult to break into, especially for outsiders, which is more or less how we are viewed and I can’t really say that I blame the locals. Needless to say, when we are actually offered a show in this area, it seriously pains me to turn it down and go through all of the motions of explaining that our members live in different states. As far as the talent coming out of the DC area is concerned, we have bands like Balaclava, The Blue Letter, and Fixtures, as well as our friends in The Osedax and Lapse.

Vestiges: You mentioned touring down to SXSW and back, which is how this interview came to be in the first place, so what are you looking forward to the most in Austin this year?

Enabler: You know the one thing I will say that makes a long distance relationship work in a band setting is that it forces you to play you’re absolute best when it’s “go” time. You don’t have the luxury of practicing once a week, so you do a practice or two before tour and then it’s on. A lot of times, more local oriented bands with have musicians that don’t even touch their instruments outside of practice. In this setting, you have to. You have to make sure you’re playing is on point before you spend hundreds of dollars traveling to band practice / tour. No time for failure.

I actually just did an interview with a local newspaper about this same question. Honestly, it’s just another show to me, and there is not much more that I like to do more in life than play shows, whether its a huge fest or a basement in front of 10 kids. We’re not trying to blow anyone’s minds or anything. I am however really stoked to see Ringworm, All Pigs Must Die, Nachtmystium, and Black Breath. I’m also bummed because I just found out Cro-Mags are playing the day before we play, and we’re playing in Houston that night. John Joseph is the fucking man.

Enabler: What are you looking to get out of SXSW?

Vestiges: We played in Austin with Downfall of Gaia over the winter and we had a bunch of people asking if we were going to make it back down for SXSW. We hadn’t really given it much thought since we had hit Austin on our previous tour as well, but Century Media and BrooklynVegan contacted us about playing a couple of showcases shortly after we got home, so we figured that we should really start considering the dates. We love Austin and we have a bunch of friends there, so it was a no-brainer, especially considering the lineups of the shows that we were being offered. It’s not every day that you get to play with Alcest, All Pigs Must Die, Andrew WK, A Storm Of Light, or Nachtmystium (to name a few) so we’re just using this as an opportunity to play some amazing shows, hang out with some friends, and have some fun. All in all, we will be playing six shows in three days including a house show in San Antonio, which we haven’t been able to hit yet, and will be bringing our friends in Sky Burial along for the ride. We will be helping them release their debut full-length later this month, so we figured SXSW would be the best time and place to get them some much needed exposure. They are seriously one of the best bands that no one knows about and we’re really hoping to change that.

Anyway, I’m stoked that we were able to do this interview. I definitely learned a lot about Enabler and feel like we are both coming from a similar place, both personally and musically speaking, so I look forward to playing with you guys that much more now. We’ll see you in a couple of days for the Century Media / CVLT Nation Showcase! Have a safe trip down.

Enabler: You guys as well. The recorded material I have heard sounds great. I’m sure this show will be amazing!